The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

podcast full-stop that just so happens to be about movies and how it is nearly impossible to make them. Let alone a good one, let alone a somewhat misbegotten misfire of a mashup of Victorian villains and heroes and an attempt to cash in on the superhero train that

was just leaving the station. A film I have deep affection for, as always, I am Chris

“Winterbauer joined by my co-host Lizzy Bassett Lizzy, what film do you have for us today?”

A league of extraordinary gentlemen or confusingly LXG as it was also marketed and as I'm going to refer to it across this episode because the title's too long. Does Sean Connery's Alan Quartaman ever say League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? No, I don't think anyone does. Moriarty does. Yes, and when he welcomes him, but I don't believe that Alan Quartaman don't believe he does. I'm so excited, this has been a long requested film and Lizzy finally

said I will pluck the poison apple from the tree and we shall eat it together. Let's get into it. Well, Chris, had you seen the League of Extraordinary Gentleman before now, what were your thoughts upon rewatching it on your birthday for the podcast? Yes. So I had seen the League of Extraordinary Gentleman before. I'd only seen it once before and I saw it in theaters when it first came out. I will take you back ever so recently Lizzy because it is a somewhat funny story. I was known a little bit

amongst my friend group is the person who was most into movies of my friends and I would get into debates with my friends over movies notably. I remember getting into a yelling match with one friend about the rock not being as good as glory as a movie which I stand by. Yes. I was shouted down by all of my friends. Yeah. All of my friends were saying the rock is way better and I said you don't understand film. We were 12 or 13 at the time and so the trailer came out for the League of

Extraordinary Gentleman and I wasn't super familiar with the characters they were riffing on. Some of them Dorian Gray, Mina Harker, I was more familiar with but Alan Quatermain for this day remains the character. I don't have much experience with it. Couldn't tell you and I've tried.

But I loved Blade and the trailer. I thought the trailer looked amazing. I thought like I really thought

this is awesome. It's steam punk. It's Victorian age. It's got action. It's got Frodo typical Nazis. It's an unusual time period that they've chosen to dive into and so I really really hyped it up and I got some friends to go see the theaters and it's one of two instances in my life. The other was Stephen King's Dreamcatcher where I lost a lot of credibility after dragon people to the theater. You know what I'm saying? Donnie Wahlberg's a great actor. Have you seen

the sixth sense and then yeah that one didn't go over that well. Donnie Wahlberg is a great actor. He is a great actor. He is a great actor. He has a great character. He did involve someone like

“pooping a some kind of evil worm into a toilet and I think that's where I bailed.”

As my friend said, why did you take us to the butt buster? So, um, any who? Let's talk about League of Extraordinary Gentleman. The movie you're here to discuss. So, I remember feeling a little let down personally when I saw it the first time. Did not hate it by any means and rewatching it. My feelings are kind of much the same. There's actually a lot. I appreciate about this movie. I think there's some really, really great practical effects work.

Some pretty incredible miniature work. I like a lot of the design choices in the movie.

I do think it starts to feel a little desaturated I think by the end but I do like a lot of the design choices. The miniatures are really cool. It carcance back to a time when there was like a bit more of a silliness in these movies that I appreciated and I think this movie suffers in a few areas for me but I want to start with, you know, the good and again, I love some of the design choices Nemo's car and submarine, for example, very fun. I actually think Sean Connery gives a pretty

fun, you know, somewhat scenery, chewing performance. Like I like seeing Sean Connery just beat people up, just in pale man on a rhino or something. He does in his daily life.

“And so I think, you know, despite having some affection for this movie, in my opinion, fall short”

of its aspirations because I still, I think it's a really fun idea. I really like the idea of this movie and I have a couple of thoughts as to why but one thing I was thinking is, if it had just leaned 10% like campier and more fun thrill ride, I feel like we would have landed in the territory of the mummy from 1999 and it feels like we're almost there and we just don't quite get it and

on and Rachel Vice for example as well who's also very fun. It felt like that movie everybody

understood the assignment which was everyone in that movie got it. Yeah, let's make it fun and then on the same token it doesn't have the heart of a film that actually visually exists in much the same world which was 2004's Hellboy which is only a year later and I feel like Hellboy actually accomplishes a lot of the things that this movie is trying to do so it feels like it doesn't have quite the heart and it doesn't have quite the humor and so as a result we get a spicy pancake as

one of our patrons responded we like spice we like pancakes we don't necessarily like them together sometimes I do if it's a scallion pancake. Yeah all to say there's a human quality to this and even though I for me it falls short of its aspirations I just saw this there's this new

mini series on YouTube it's not even a mini series like three minute AI slot videos that Darren

Ernawski is making about the American revolution it's insane I thought that headline was fake and I watched one of them and I thought this is so much worse than the League of Extraordinary Gentleman because there's nothing human about this at all and then when I watched League of Extraordinary Gentleman even as moments may be fall flat or the story doesn't entirely come together it feels like such a you know you can see the humanity in every frame and the

fact that they clearly built a lot of these sets I know there is a lot of CGI in the movie but there's a lot of practical qualities to this movie that I really enjoyed so end of my last thing

“I'll say is I think part of the issue is that there is no one to play off of Sean Connery that”

feels like he's equal on screen well there's a reason for that yeah I think a lot of the actors are doing their absolute best with these characters perhaps because I don't know them Sean Connery stands out too much or vice versa but there seems to be an imbalance on screen so those are my thoughts I agree I think this movie could be titled the League of Extraordinary Gentleman colon human error because yes it's very human it doesn't work but it's not terrible by any means I really like the

idea as we're going to come to understand this was existing IP prior to the movie someone we have talked about before I love the idea of a bunch of a justice league of Victorian you know super yeah it's coming together it's so fun I have no problem with that I think a lot of the production design looks great yeah I think the fight choreography is really good Nemo's yeah it is particular are really really fun but you're totally right they miss the mark on the tone and I think

we will come to understand why very quickly over the course of this episode the story is also just a total mess again there are very concrete reasons for that which we will come to understand that are not present in the source material and I do want to call out I actually think that most

“of the league does a wonderful job in this I think Nasa Rude and Shaw as Nemo is great for me he's one”

of my favorite parts of this movie Jason Fleming is Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde really fun I really liked Jason Fleming he holds up next to Sean Connery and I actually liked the way they designed his character really yeah I thought it was fun we're 90% of his body is arms that's fun I thought it was cool I was like this is fun this is great I don't care it's great I'm in I liked the villain that has only one giant arm at the end I thought I was like this is cool this is fun yeah I thought he was great

I think Peter Wilson is fun as Mina Harker even though there are certain problems there that we'll get to but you know it's a misfire but it's a misfire that comes in guns of blazing and I do appreciate that about this arrow so I had seen this at some point I believe I rented it because I thought it was mystery men by mistake and I weirdly liked mystery men which I haven't watched since I was like 12 that I don't know if it holds up but that was my experience of watching

the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen when I was young and thinking what the hell is this like what what happened same as you I didn't know who most of these characters were I may have known who Dorian Gray was which the fact that both of us were able to recognize him is something to keep in mind as we move forward over the course of this episode I do think he's one of the weakest

“parts of this movie he doesn't really work for me I think Stuart Tanzan is either miscast or the”

characters not quite well written it doesn't work like you said I would argue both yeah it doesn't work don't think it's his fault necessarily but the yeah that's a weak point but you know going into this I was like oh my god this movie is going to be so bad it's gonna be absolutely like this is gonna be unwatchable based on you know what sort of the lore is around this movie and I started watching it and I was like well you know this makes no sense there are moments that jump around

there are moments of editing that make no sense there's a moment with Mina early on like in her first

reveal and fight sequence where her hair is like up in a perfect bun and then it's down and like Bella Swan vampire dresses and then it's back up in a perfect bun and it's been two seconds total over the course of that well there's also during Greg and he shot seven thousand times and then the next cut his suit is fine there's fine there's a lot of that it is fine but it's just clear

a couple of other things I really wanted to shout out I love Sean Connery's little like baby bonnet that they put on him in the snow I don't know if you noticed his little knit infants cap really liked that I liked their snow costumes in general I actually like the costumes

“across the board I think they're very fun in this I also like let's make sure Sean Connery”

doesn't come off his racist in the opening so we'll make him say I've watched a lot of friends die

white friends and black friends which some I'll need for it did make you work it's I never

would have thought of it if they hadn't brought it up alright I don't want to waste any more time talking about this movie in terms of you know what I thought what I thought is I didn't hate it I'd watch it again it is insane and the story truly makes negative sense but you know they tried something and I will always appreciate that so let's kick off with the basic info as always the League of Extraordinary Gentleman was directed by Stephen Norrington with a screenplay by James Robinson

who is based on the League of Extraordinary Gentleman comic books by Alan Moore and Illustrator Kevin O'Neill or graphic novel I believe it was combined to several volumes it stars Sean Connery Jason Fleming Nasi Rudin Shaw Peter Wilson Richard Roxborough Shane West Stuart Townsend Tony Keren and many more it was released July 11th 2003 and the IMDB Logline is in an alternate Victorian age world

“a group of famous contemporary fantasy science fiction and adventure characters team up on a secret”

mission even the logline can't decide to qualify the motley crew they've got here so to talk about the League of Extraordinary Gentleman we do have to talk about its author Alan Moore now if you want a detailed history of who Alan Moore is please go back and listen to our episode on V for Vendetta where Chris went into a lot of detail on Moore but Chris could you give us a very brief explanation of where Alan Moore was by the 90s and sort of what kinds of things he had

worked on by the 90s he's entering his 40s he's from England working class family hopped around job to job late 1970s he decides to follow his art into an artistic career starts working from Marvel UK and very quickly is recognized as a precocious and unique talent within the comics space so he goes on to create V for Vendetta for example in the 1980s very much that can anti-fascist story he is an anarchist a self-described anarchist Alan Moore in the traditional sense and more

finds himself despite writing some very successful comics for DC which ends up being the publisher of V for Vendetta he finds himself at odds with his publisher specifically over rights issues and he is very much a believer in the artist and the creator having control over their work which is obviously not something that a large corporation necessarily is going to feel the same about and so he had a

“very I believe by this point Lizzie I'm not sure what exact date you're talking about he had a very”

public rupture with DC and then he would end up coming back to them that's exactly right he's probably the most famous for two comics both of which were written in the 80s both of which fell under the DC umbrella you mentioned one which is V for Vendetta and the others of course watchman right now you mentioned the breakup with DC there were two things that really really pissed him off one was that DC had chosen to label its adult themed comics as suggested for

mature readers and this included a lot of Moore's works he really did not like that the second was

at the agreement he had signed with DC gave him the rights back to both watchman and V for Vendetta but only once they went out of print and he came to realize that that was essentially meaningless and he felt like he had been tricked because DC had no intention of ever stopping reprints of either book so he severed ties with DC and he had bounced around a few independent publishing houses before he landed at Wildstorm Studios and he was given his own imprint under Wildstorm called

America's best comics and it's here under his own imprint that more wrote the league of extraordinary gentlemen among other titles over the course of the late 90s film producer Don Murphy had become very interested in adapting some of Moore's work Don Murphy huge film producer natural born killers tons of other stuff he had already acquired the rights to from hell Moore's graphic novel about Jack the Ripper which would later become the 2001 Johnny Dept film

of the same name which I secretly really enjoyed Chris shrugs like he doesn't know never seen it

no I thought I will be honest in my mind sleepy hollow and from hell are kind of the same movie yes you smoosh them together and I like the costumes in both I smoosh them together they're great but I have trouble separating them in my mind I need to rewatch well one's England Chris you do do the other ones New York anything outside of California is just who cares so from hell ironically spent quite some time in development hell and it was during this period around early

1998 ish that Don Murphy first became aware of the league of extraordinary gentlemen so Murphy told

friend Alan I just happened that day to say dude ski what else are you working on by the time he was done pitching me my jaw was on the floor okay that's the coolest thing I've ever heard so Murphy option the league of extraordinary gentleman when it was reportedly just a three-page treatment that early optioning of this idea is important and it will come back to bite Mr. Moore in the butt talks to foreshadow one of our future episodes by June of 1998 Murphy had league of extraordinary

gentlemen set up at 20th century fox and the comic still hadn't been published and then to add insult to Moore's previous injury and you teed this up Chris at the end of 1998 wildstorm sold to who that's right DC now DC did actually acquire the rights to some of the characters that had been released under more as America's best comics imprint so why is the league of extraordinary gentlemen streaming at a discounted price I might add on Amazon and other streaming platforms

and not on HBO which of course is owned by Warner which owns DC Chris well first of all I did buy it

because it was only $1 more to buy it and it was like I could watch this a lot and then I watched it once and I thought kind of what my dollar back but Warner owns DC yes but 20th century fox is owned by Disney and so presumably this could end up on it's is it an orphan Lizzy could it end up on Disney

“plus I think it's a bit of an orphan the rights of this are a little strange I think that they have”

remained with fox as far as I understand it and in terms of Alan Moore I think what happened here is that he was able to kind of create a firewall around the league of extraordinary gentleman where he said you're not getting this and DC did not manage to get the rights to the league so Alan Moore at this point really wanted to think of his work as entirely separate from any film adaptations he told comic book resources quote as long as I could distance myself by not seeing them enough to keep

them separate take the option money I could be assured no one would confuse the two this was probably naive on my part as we'll learn later in the episode it was indeed naive let's talk very briefly about the comic itself which did begin releasing in 1999 but was designed as sort of a justice league of Victorian era literary protagonists assembled by the British government to protect the interest of the empire and in the league you got of course Alan Kursher main protagonist

of age writer haggard's 1885 novel King Solomon's Minds not familiar Captain Nemo of Jules Verne's 20,000 leagues under the sea Dr. Jekyll from Robert Lewis Stevenson's strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Holly Griffin from HG Wells the invisible man now Chris do you notice anything right

“away about the characters I just listed off all possibly public domain by this point I think yes”

that's not where I'm going okay so two things one the invisible man he's not named Holly Griffin in this movie no so keep that in mind the other thing is I left a member of the league off who did I just leave off Mina harker that's right Mina harker Tom Sawyer hold on now hold your horses let's

talk about Mina harker first so yes I left off Dorian Gray Tom Sawyer and Mina harker let's start

with Mina who by the way is Mina Murray in the comic important because she's divorced Jonathan harker's ass after the whole Dracula incident and second of all she's not in the league Chris she is the leader of the league which makes the title make sense it is a league of extraordinary gentlemen she is not a gentleman no but they are her gentlemen so all of a sudden it makes sense she's also not a vampire I was wondering about that I didn't mind that she was a vampire I guess

it makes no sense and she's in the son a lot in this movie I don't know I didn't really understand what we were doing with that she's blade yes that's true she's a daywalker she's a daywalker

“professor Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes and Fu Manchu originally created by Sax Romer I believe”

only appears as the doctor in the comic but both of them feature as villains the comic is quite complicated but volume one does essentially follow Mina Murray as she assembles the league and they complete their mission given to them by M.I.5 agent Bond relative of James Bond of course to retrieve a stolen Cavalry engine from the doctor Cavalry being a fictional anti-gravity

substance created by H.G. Wells and his novel the first men in the moon it's eventually revealed

that Bond's superior at M.I.5 previously only referred to as M is indeed supervillain professor Moriarty who wanted the Cavalry engine for himself and is an underground turf war with the doctor the league saves the day and my craft homes takes over at M.I.5 now that is a massive oversimplification of a very complex series of graphic novels that really does not pander to its audience at all. But back at Fox they're very excited about the property the dot Murphy has brought them and

recognizable and they either were easy enough to get the rights to for most of them or they

“were in the public domain so this seems pretty good if you're looking for something that has existing”

IP. Murphy was a self-professed anglophile and he pushed hard for a British screenwriter and director now an initial screenwriter was hired I don't know whether or not that person was British but they struggled with the script and after about a year they got the boot and Murphy brought on James Robinson so Robinson was a British author of American comics best known at this point for DC's starman revival in 1994 for which he had earned an Eisner award for best serialized story and

that series had ended right before he started working on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and the script ran into a few issues right away issue number one Fox could not get the right

to HG Wells the invisible man according to Don Murphy quote the invisible man is not in the

public domain I don't know how the comic book manages to use the invisible man but they do when it went to Fox's lawyers the HG Wells estate is still copyrighted however the idea of and invisible man is a public domain idea which is why we have a different last name than more did I love that he's not the invisible man I was wondering if it had something to do with universal because of their use of the invisible man like as a universal monsters property but obviously

that's not right that's interesting it has to do with the actual source material I don't know

“yeah I was wondering if that's why Mina Harker was changed anyway there's some overlap”

with the universal world with some of these characters right and so that's why I was curious you

have this rival studio that made a lot of money on them their monsters in the thirties and whatnot

and so I was curious if there was some sort of studio tetatet going on now it's interesting about Mina I don't think they would have rights to her based on I don't know no I don't think so either I guess I'm just saying like oh you're infringing on our on our monsters world in some way sure so the doctor also known as fumanshu was also dropped because the heir to the character's creator sex romer had already optioned fumanshu elsewhere but apart from these issues

according to Robinson the early screenplay was excellent it had a turn of the century league preventing a flesh eating gas from being introduced into the New York City subway system but we're right around mid 2001 at this point and Chris what happened in the fall of 2001 the twin towers fell in the worst terrorist attack on US soil in history that's right September 11th so suddenly the studio was very concerned I would say understandably about the

movie featuring a terrorist attack on the New York City subway system right so Robinson had to rethink pretty much everything in what at this point was a very New York city based story this required a pretty hefty rewrite moving the story to Europe replacing the poison gas with a mad bomber I don't know why you had to replace the gas but anyway and it was during this rewrite the 20th century fox exerted quite significant creative control over the material now fox had a very

specific request for this very British comic throw in a dash of the old USA they wanted it to appeal to American audiences so they requested an American character resulting in who Chris Tom Sawyer yeah he's got black friends too yeah it's it's like it's fine I guess it's just he doesn't fit in with the rest of the group doesn't in any way I would argue both he and in my opinion Alan Quarterman are the two that like don't really fit in in this totally I don't know why

Alan Quarterman's there he's a good shot as far as I admit you know they add the thing here where it's like he can't be killed but Tom Sawyer loosely based on Mark Twain's less popular sequel Tom Sawyer detective which sounds like it's not real which a teen Tom solves a murder please let that be true detective season five just please let it be some Sawyer detective during gray was also added or more accurately massively expanded since Don Murphy says he does appear in a few panels of

Moore's original comic I'd have it read it I can't for sure confirm that but he's certainly not part of the league now Robinson did tell the LA Times quote as brilliant as the graphic novel is it is not a movie and unfortunately the reading level of the world has declined so introducing the literary characters was something that had to be dealt with head on now I think it's interesting both you and I when we saw this when we were you know 14 15 years old maybe one of the only

“characters we knew was Dorian Gray I'm guessing that's why his addition is in here yeah I feel”

like at least the name the picture of Dorian Gray you've heard at least for me he was associated with the idea of immortality yes I understood that I think he's an easy character to recognize quickly yeah Dorian was mean a harker by name was not but I've see understood the vampire element and then it was Dr. Jackal right and Mr. Hyde and you can understand the shorthand of an invisible man and Nemo I had seen 20,000 leaks under the sea I hadn't read it but I'd seen the version from the

was still couldn't tell you just make a change but I know they can't but yeah I think they can yeah of course the biggest crime here is what they did to Mina according to illustrator Kevin O'Neill quote they changed the whole balance by marginalizing Mina and making her a vampire I mean what the hell is she doing there why is she there quarter man is in charge the whole thing falls apart in lacks cohesiveness according to one of Morse friends and colleagues Scott Dunbier quote I remember

more telling me a story about the producer calling him up an excitedly telling Alan about a scene with Mina using her vampiric powers to climb a wall and bite someone on the neck and Alan told me he replied that's an interesting interpretation of my work yeah and she's kind of just used for like sexual harassment comic relief in this version and and she's literally the leader of it in the comic yeah I know and it's also a bummer because I agree I do think Peter Wilson gives

an interesting performance she plays it almost as if she's a little detached or aloof at first

which is interesting when she then engages with the vampiric qualities you know towards the end but and they try to shove in a love story that doesn't work at all with Tom Sawyer and it just

“yeah it ends up distracting I think from the finished product it's very strange but Chris something else”

happened thanks to September 11th the director that Don Murphy had had his eye on for years was finally available so let's meet Steven Norrington. Steven Norrington was born in the UK around 1964 and not a ton is known about his early life but by the mid-80s he'd made quite a name for himself working in special effects and special effects make up on films like Gremlins, Aliens, the witches returned to Oz split second many more but by the late 80s he thought ah I think I'd like to try

something else and according to Makeup Artist Dave L. he quote Steve became very good makeup artist but halfway through his career he said I'm not going to do this anymore I'm going to become a director and everybody said ha good luck with that you can't just change careers so anyways he went off and he became a director now Norrington knew he needed to work with material that he really cared about so he started writing it himself and this resulted in his directorial debut 1994's

Death Machine, a low budget Terminator-esque film starring Wormtong himself Brad Dorif. That's right. Not a ton of people saw it. Sorry Lizzie do you know who else is briefly in this movie? No. I have seen Death Machine I saw it a long time ago. Rachel Vice has a very small part in Death Machine. Oh interesting.

“Yeah, I think she was very very very young. She would have been five years before the mommy so.”

Yeah, nice. Well luckily it didn't matter that not many people in the audience saw it because I'm important people at New Line Cinema did. They were looking for a director for one of their upcoming films and adaptation of the comic book, Blade. Now Blade's screenwriter David Esgoyer told Sinofantasty in 2002, quote, "Norrington had made one very small film that very few people had seen but we liked the fact that he had this kind of insane crazed energy and that he was coming

out of left field. It wasn't the usual choice because of that he elevated what in a way was a

glorified B movie. So I want to stop for a second and talk about Blade because I think it is

important to today's story. I rewatched it for this episode and man is it fun. It is so good. It's so tight. I guess the tone. Yes, it just nails the tone. It looks just right. It is campy in a really delicious way. The timing is so funny. Yeah, Chris what's your take on Blade? Well it's interesting because it almost, okay, Guy Richie right snatch around this time too. There's this sort of winking rebellious mischievous anti-establishment British quality to it

and then Wesley Snipes gives this almost like black exploitation performance at the center of it too. Yes, and they work so well together. And you also have Stephen Dorf as the villain. I love camping a little Stephen Dorf and this can be a little Stephen Dorf and the movie has some a couple of special effects that have not aged well Stephen Dorf getting sliced in half and the blood pulling his body back together at the end. It doesn't look great. Whatever. But the costumes are

great. Yes. The practical effects are great. The sword play is fantastic. Yes. And it proved that you

“could do a fun, r-rated superhero film well before I think we really even knew that that was”

commercialy possible. And one thing that I do think is interesting just to pivot for just with you, I'm only one cold assac. I think it's so interesting that I think Yermel Dorf very successfully took the tone from the first blade and elevated it even further with blade two. And then it's so interesting that he was able to pull off in my opinion with Hellboy what Norington ultimately was unable to with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And so it's just like an interesting connection

of worlds and fates there. I think there's a flexibility to Guillermo Dorf Toro that Norington doesn't have as we're gonna get to. But point being blade is excellent. It works really really well. It is a tight cohesive fun movie. And it worked very well at the box office. It was released in

August of 1998 and it up grossing over $131 million on a $45 million budget. Now Chris you've covered

blade? I think briefly. So Marvel was involved in the 90s in like effectively corporate warfare over

“the soul of the company. There was a big corporate proxy fight going on. I believe Carl Icon was”

on one side of it. And in the end they started licensing the rights to their characters very liberally in order to generate cash as quickly as possible. Right. They were going bankrupt, right? They were going bankrupt. And so in the early 90s you have a gold rush a bit of superhero IP being sold. And that was to a certain extent off the success of something like the X-Men animated series that Fox had made. And they started selling off all again licensing all of these characters.

And there were all of these announcements of you know Spider-Man is gonna be made by James Cameron is an example that we discussed. And most of these projects did not come to fruition with few exceptions.

And the most successful was blade. I believe it was the first successful Marvel comic book adaptation.

I think we'd had the Punisher before that with Dolph Lundgren. We'd had Howard The Duck in 1986, which was a big old duck condom flapper. So all of a Marvel all of a sudden I think there is

“a proof of concept that Marvel can be adapted. But at this moment Marvel has actually I believe”

lost a lot of the rights to their characters at least in these licensing deals in the short term. And they don't have the strengths or position within the marketplace to get them back and make the movies on their own. And so this is the period where Marvel movies are being made by all these other studios. Right. Couple of important things to call out. One is that the leadership had pretty much entirely changed at Marvel. They're coming out of legal battles as you pointed out.

They're coming up out of bankruptcy. It's interesting that Blade is the thing that ends up kind of lifting them out at the tail end of this because out of all the characters that we're being discussed as being adapted. Blade is one of the least well known. So what you have with this movie is a proof of concept for an R-rated superhero movie that did a bang-up job at the box office with a character that not as many people were familiar about. And it didn't matter. It did really,

“really well. So, you know, a lot of people credit X-Men with kind of the reboot of this type of superhero”

franchise. It's really Blade. Yeah. Blade is what made X-Men possible. In fact, that's basically

how they got X-Men Greenland was the success of Blade. Yeah. I always see it as, yeah, Blade walks.

So X-Men can jog, so Spider-Man can run. You know, like those seem like the stepping stones, you know, into that. That's exactly right. But there's something else remarkable about Blade, which is that Steven Norrington was given an enormous amount of creative control on this. Probably because, again, this movie was a gamble. It wasn't that expensive, and Blade was not the most well known character. Norrington would later tell Rewind Zone, quote, "blades of significantly

more effective film than League of Extraordinary Gentlemen because the music and picture are so tightly interlocked." And that's because he really, like, got his fingers in every single pot and had a massive amount of control over it. But not everyone was a fan of how much control he exerted on set. Cinematographer Theo VanSans had the following in an interview with flashback files, quote, "The director of Blade was a young Brit, a genius when it came to film,

but he had no social skills whatsoever." That's something we will hear multiple times across this episode. He was very arrogant. He had done one great little film with no money at all, so during our meeting, I became a little arrogant as well, because I had done a fucking lot. But we had a good meeting, and I decided to do it. But when they got to set, VanSans was disturbed to find that Norrington was, quote, "really exploiting the power that came with

his first big Hollywood opportunity." As a young, well-educated, arrogant Brit, he could be

really vicious. For me, that's not a problem. I can deal with that. I'm next to him creating this film, but don't touch my crew. They were card for their money, but he did abuse them several times. He talked to my gaffer as if he was nothing. I had warned him, when it happened again, I walked off, half the crew followed me. Still, after a success like Blade, it was inevitable that Hollywood would be knocking at Norrington's door for his next project. But the thing is,

he didn't really care. He turned down almost every offer he got. He was particularly wary of three picture deals not wanting to be trapped by any one studio, and he would only accept one picture deals. So, in May of 99, he was attached to direct an adaptation of brother termite through James Cameron's Lightstorm Entertainment, but while this was awaiting an official Greenlight, Norrington directed and fully post-produced the last minute. And he told Anacool News,

quote, "It's a very personal movie from a script I wrote, and I got to do it exactly the way I liked. It really helped me develop as a filmmaker. I am grateful to Matt Justice, my producing partner, two executive producers who Greenlight the picture on my terms making it possible for me to have the all-time dream film making experience. So, his version of the all-time dream film making experience is he does everything." Well, it's interesting that he's setting up with James Cameron.

think Lawrence and would have had that experience working under James Cameron necessarily.

“No. Also, you should shout out, Brother Turmit. I believe the concept or they pull a scene from it”

to do the concept work for motion capture, for avatar. If you remember in our avatar episode. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, the last minute grossed $3,639 worldwide. But it also basically had no theatrical release. I don't think this had an expectation that it was going to make a lot of money. As for the Blade franchise, Norrington stuck to his one-picture rule and turned down Blade 2, which as you pointed

out went to Guillermo Del Toro. Next, he was attached to Ghost Rider, but that never materialized

with him at the helm, and it was around this time that Don Murphy had begun approaching him about the League of Extraordinary Gentleman. But initially thanks to Ghost Rider, he said, "No thanks, I'm sorry, I'm unavailable." Murphy tried again when Ghost Rider fell apart, but Norrington was, again, booked. This time on a Samuel L. Jackson Jennifer Lopez thriller called TikTok about a terrorist blowing up LA shopping malls before Christmas. And this one seemed

like it was definitely going to move forward until, yes, we're back at September 11th. According to Theo Vansan, Norrington's chosen cinematographer for the project, who apparently was back for more after Blade. They said, quote, "After the attack on the twin towers, my agent called the studio and asked if they were going to pull the plug." And the second and command there said, "No, no, in June, everybody will have forgotten about this, so we'll

continue with pre-production." But no mall wanted us to film there because of the terrorist storyline. At a certain moment, the project crashed, of course. No, we're not going to forget about

“it in June. I believe the slogan after was never forget. So... Anyway, finally, Don Murphy got”

his wish, and Norrington signed on to the League of Extraordinary Gentleman. And no small part because he thought this one might actually get made. Yeah, and you know, you have to work at a certain point, too. Yeah, it's been years, and he was also drawn to the film's quote, "potential for world-building and an exhilarating lack of concern for boring realism." All right, behind the camera, the team was assembled. The script was script, and now it was time to cast the league.

First up, Sean Connery, as Alan Quashaman. Now I'm going to do a lot of Sean Connery over the

course this episode, and it's going to be bad. And you're just going to have to listen to it. Sorry about that. So, since we have not talked about him extensively on the podcast before, let's get a brief history of... Sean Connery. He was born August 25, 1930 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He grew up in a working class family and enlisted in the Navy following World War II, and after three years in the Royal Navy, he took up professional bodybuilding, famously competing in the 1953 Mr. Universe pageant.

It should be noted that Connery was a big guy over six foot two with a very muscular build. But eventually he realized he wanted to give acting a shot, and landed a small role in a touring production of South Pacific, and then he took on the lead in that production. And he starts picking up TV from here, notably a production of Rod Sirlings Requiem for a heavyweight in which he played washed up boxer Mountain Rivera. Then he starts to pick up a few film roles, but in 1962,

at the age of only 32, Connery was rocketed to Superstardom thanks to what film Chris.

Dr. No? Yes. The first official James Bond movie, Dr. No. And Connery was pretty much an icon

from here on out, starring in six official Bond films and one unofficial. But he didn't stop the Bond, he took on other iconic roles in The Untouchables, Indiana Jones, and the last crusade, and my personal favorite Sean Connery performance, the hunt for Red October. Sorry, the rock. For he plays a Scottish Russian man. Yes, and I liked it.

It's great. He said, and he said some great, you know, the rock. I love, as you just mentioned, and some good dramatic roles, finding forster. I thought it was good. It was later, but yeah. Listen, I think Sean Connery is a good actor and a very fun on-screen presence. He was also an asshole in November of 1965. Connery famously gave an interview to Playboy magazine in which he stated, quote, "I don't think there's anything particularly wrong about hitting a woman,

although I don't recommend doing it in the same way you'd hit a man." He recommended you give her a good open-handed slap, but stop sort of punching her in the face. Ehh, he added, "If a woman is a bitch or her starry girl or bloody minded continually, then not do it." Now, let's do think this was just the 60s, and an excellent Barbara Walters interview from 1987, he doubles down. Let's give it a watch, Chris.

Years ago, you didn't interview, which may come back to haunted. You don't even want to say, right? No. Okay, you didn't interview in which you said, "Not the worst thing to slap a woman and then as I remember you said you don't do it with a clenched face to spread of the

“do it with an open head." Yeah, remember that? Yeah. I love that.”

I've been changed my opinion. You haven't? No, not at all. You think it's good to slap a woman? No, I don't think it's good. I think it's bad. I don't think it's bad. I don't think it's bad. I think that it depends entirely on the circumstances

and women are pretty good at this, they can't leave it alone. They don't want to have the last word and you give them the last word, but they're not happy with the last word. They want to say it again and get into a really provocative situation. Then, I think it's absolutely right. To give her good slap. Yeah, absolutely. What if she gives you good slap back? Well, then you get into another area. I mean, then maybe she's getting to like it and then it becomes something else. I don't know.

But no, no, no. It's seriously, I think that it's the last result. He's not going to do it because he wants to do it. Wait, will people see this interview? Are you going to get male? I'm going to get you a female. Wow. By the way, I highly recommend watching that Barbara Walters

interview. She does an amazing job of really buttering him up before she goes in for the kill there.

And then you slap each other again. Barbara's fast. You know, he also talks a lot in this interview about how much he hates golfing with women. Like an enormous amount of time is spent on that. Now, six years later, he tripled down in Vanity Fair saying, quote,

“sometimes that a woman who take it to the wire, that's what they're looking for, the ultimate”

confrontation. They want to smack. Later, he would say all these remarks were taken out of context. I think as we just saw, they were not. And in 2006, after his first wife, Diane Salento, came forward with a memoir detailing emotional and physical abuse in their relationship. Connery finally said, quote, "My view is I don't believe that any level of abuse against women is ever justified under any circumstances full stop." Sure. So why am I telling you all of this?

Well, I think it's an important window into Mr. Connery's psyche, particularly as it pertains to people he doesn't see eye to eye with. This is not a man who relishes disagreement, and particularly does not relish disagreement from someone he considers his subordinate. Now, we have discussed this in the Lord of the Rings episode, but Chris, what role did Sean Connery famously pass on? "Gonna!" And why did he pass on it? "I don't think he even read the script."

No, he did. He read the book and the script. Oh, you don't remember this? No, no, I am totally blanking. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, he read the book and the script and he came back and he said, "I don't get it." Oh, that's right. They like sent to two of them in the Caribbean or something and it took forever to hear from him. And they literally said, "This is not exactly accurate, but something like we will give you 10% of the net proceeds of the movie."

Yes, Chris, this reportedly caused him somewhere around $350 million, because he passed on this role.

Yeah. He also reportedly passed on a role in the Matrix for the same reason. "I don't get it."

“Yeah, I believe they offered him the role of the architect in the Matrix.”

Oh, I don't think it was more fias. Now, Chris Sean Connery didn't like women, but he did like golf and money. So the next time a script came across his desk that he didn't get, he thought, "God, damn it. If I don't understand it, that probably means it's a gold mine." Unfortunately, for Sean, that script was the league of extraordinary gentleman.

And unfortunately, for the film's budget, he came on board for $17 million, which is an enormous

chunk of the movie's $80 million budget. $80 million is about in the middle. You'll see 85.

You may see 90. You may see 75. 80 to 85 is about safe. Regardless over 20% or roughly 20% of the films budget. Yeah. Now, thanks to that water of a fee and you pointed this out, they did not have money to cast really any other known faces in this movie, which is how we wind up with Stuart Townsend as Dorian Gray.

Also, loader-related probably best known for being fired from the role of Ergonn, and replaced by Beagle Mortensen. I don't know if fired is exactly the right way to put it. It seems like it was- He said it was- I know, but my understanding- if I'm remembering our episodes correctly, there was a pretty mutual sense of this isn't working.

“I believe that, but to hear him tell it, when he said was, "I was there for her singing training”

for two months, then was fired the day before filming began." After that, I was told they wouldn't pay me because I was in breach of contract, due to not having worked long enough. I'd been having a rough time with them, so I was almost relieved to be leaving until they told me I wouldn't be paid. So yeah, that does sound like it wasn't working out very well.

He had also played Listat in Queen of the Damned, but again, not a super well-known actor at all. Peter Wilson came on as Mina Harker, and she actually replaced Monica Balucci, who dropped out very close to filming. She had to drop out due to tears of the sun running over schedule. She was also exhausted from back-to-back shoots at that point. Peter is not really an actress. She's not super well-known in the U.S.

probably best known internationally at this point for her starring role in the Canadian series, LaFam Niquita, which ran from 97 to 2001. Despite the admittedly horrible changes they

I did too. I do think Monica Balucci would have been a bigger draw because, for example,

2003, would have been... Well, she's recognizable. She's very recognizable. Obviously, she's something irreversible, but then within mainstream U.S. cinema, you would have had the release of the Matrix Reloaded. Right. And she has a very noticeable role in that movie. You also get Shane West as Tom Sawyer. Now West was very much in the running at the exact same time as this to play John Connor in Terminator 3 when he was auditioning for

L.X. G. Because of this, he kind of didn't give a shit about the L.X. G audition and came in with that energy which worked for the character. Outside of Connor, West was probably the most well-known actor in the film, even though, again, he was not at all a huge star at this point. He had starred on once again, and of course, alongside Mandy Moore in a walk to remember. That's right. That's millennial, a fault in our stars for all you young ins out there. Also, Dracula 2000. Yes.

“Which was, I believe, Gerard Butler's first big role as well. I've seen that because my mom”

loved Gerard Butler and she bought it on TV. It's kind of like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen in a lot of ways. It's a similar tone, but it actually works better because Gerard Butler has more of a sense of humor. Yeah. And then one of my favorite Shane West performances, I believe he's in the beginning of Oceans 11 as one of the actors playing themselves with Rusty doing the poker scene. Yeah, he can be funny, too. He doesn't really get to do it in this, but I think Shane West is funny.

I know, he doesn't, but he can be pretty self-aware and meta in that way. Yeah. But just like Sean Connery, when Shane West read this script, he was confused. But he told Black Film quote, "I got more interested after reading the comic book and seeing that my character was not in it because I could take this as an opportunity to create something." That totally makes sense to me. He, of course, did not get Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines next stall played John Conner in that,

but he did get LXG. Yeah. What have you been that much better off in Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines? I know that movie made more money, certainly, but I don't think Nick Stahl's career was

“done a ton of favors by that film. Well, I don't think that was Terminator. I think that had to”

do more with personal problems. I actually think Nick Stahl was teed up to be a pretty big star after that. Oh, okay. And to be fair, Claire Dane certainly did well after Terminator 3. Yeah, I think it would have been more beneficial to Shane West's career for sure. Now, Sirudin Shaw came on board as Captain Nemo and believe it or not,

the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was the first major Hollywood production to actually cast an

Indian actor as Nemo since the silent era. So at least they got this right and he is wonderful in it. As I said, I really love his fight sequences. I think he brings a gravitas to the role. And by the way, he was very well-known and very prolific star of films in India. He'd also been in monsoon wedding. He just was not well-known in the U.S. That could be a really smart way to cast the movies. Okay. We can't afford giant American

names, but maybe we can make the box opposite peel internationally a little bit more

“strengthen it by casting big names from other countries. I wonder if that's what they were doing”

with like Monica Baluchi too because she was a big star. Yeah, in Italy for sure. Yeah, exactly. Richard Roxborough came on as M the Phantom in Moriarty and I really like him. He's not used very well on this, but he's a fun villain as we saw in Mulan Rouge among others. And of course Jason Fleming joined as Dr. Jackal. I actually think he is maybe the most successful performance in this movie. He equates himself very well and it's actually a pretty convincing duel performance, I think.

And it's fun when they start kind of working together at the end. I agree. Yeah. And it's good. I want to give a quick shout out to some of the below-the-line folks who did a great job on this movie before we dive into the filming. Production designer Carol Spear, costume designer Jacqueline West, cinematographer Dan Loussen, and stunt coordinator Eddie Perez shout out to all of you. So on June 28th, 2002, Principal Photography kicked off in Prague.

They did great success filming from Hell there. It makes sense. It looks beautiful. It's, you know, old world Europe. It's very cheap. Totally understand why this movie would be shot there. The city of Venice was built outside a former heavy machinery factory in Prague, as well as some recreations of Nairobi. But Chris, in August of 2002, after only about a month of filming, it started to rain. And not just normal rain.

The Czech Republic was struck with one of the largest floods in its entire history. It destroyed more than 1,000 homes, kilometers of roads, dozens of bridges, 50,000 people were forced to evacuate. 17 people were killed. The damage would take two years to rebuild and prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. This flood was the costliest disaster to hit the city in generations. By August 15th, the floods had shut down tourist attractions and the unthinkable had happened.

They had stopped production of the country's two most famous beers, Pilsner, and the original Budweiser. And things did not go well for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen either. 60% of the crew were at a hill to which ended up getting evacuated because the lobby

flooded with over a foot of water. $7 million worth of sets were destroyed, including Nemo's

to the shooting schedule, and it scattered cast and crew across the continent. After various

emergency evacuations, because to be clear, this flood did not just affect the Czech Republic.

“It was widespread across Europe. I think Germany was actually the hardest hit, so they were”

literally getting moved from location to location and being evacuated again. Even Sean Connery was evacuated from the four seasons and rescued only his golf clubs. According to cinematographer Dan Lousen, who would go on to be who's go to cinematographer? We've mentioned him a couple times across the episode now. James Cameron?

Gary Modell Torah. Oh, he's his DP. Yeah, I didn't know that very cool. He said quote, "For me it was a fantastic movie to do because it was a huge movie. My first really big American movie. Director Steven Norrington is a very clever guy.

It was a tough shoot because it was raining for like nine months and made a big flood and people were losing their homes while we were shooting. It was really bad. Steven Norrington did a really great job on the whole concept. But Norrington says the flood itself wasn't the problem. It was the studio's reaction to it. He told Rewind Zone, quote, "The studio didn't want to give us money to cover the delay caused by the floods. They wanted us to find funds from within the

existing budget which meant cutting things we had already committed to."

“So I think this is where we start to get into the what the fuck is happening territory”

in terms of losing the plot over the course of this movie.

Is they literally just, they cut scenes that were like crucial to character development and story.

Yeah, one really jarring example for me was most of the team has been assembled and all the sudden you just jumped to Paris and Mr. Hyde is running across the rooftops and they're chasing him. We have not established that we were trying to find this guy. We have not established who this person is. It just drops you in and I think you're familiar enough with this character that you kind of just roll with it and keep moving. I have no idea why we need him. I have no idea

how they got here and then the story just keeps going. Again, it just feels like there was five minutes excised of exposition that would have been helpful. There's a lot of that and I think that that is due at least in part to this flood. Although I would argue this is probably the biggest issue. So Norrington did fight hard for scenes that he believed were crucial to the film including one sequence involving all world leaders in the background that he said was really pivotal

for the movie as well as character defining scenes as we said exposition and some large scale set pieces. He said quote, I was surprised to discover how steely rigid and inflexible I could be in my defense of the movie's content viewing it in hindsight as a clue that I wasn't temperamentally

“suited to being a Hollywood filmmaker. Now I think this is interesting because I wonder had there been”

a more flexible and I wonder if this is what he's hinting at had there been a more flexible director in his position? Could they have been better at compromise and finding ways to fill some of these gaps versus Norrington just being kind of all or nothing about what was able to be captured? I don't know. I think it's really hard to say. I was trying to look at it such a two-way street. I was trying to look at other films that were being produced at Fox around this time, you know,

and you have something like X2 which was extremely successful but Brian Singer was notoriously difficult to work with for the studio and to manage. Oh, way worse than Steven Norrington. Yeah. Exactly. So the question is maybe does Norrington fall into a middle zone? He's not flexible enough, but he doesn't have the cloud of a singer to be the asshole that he's being. But he's not an alleged sexual predator. Of course. I'm saying though in just in terms of

the working relationship between him and the studio, he could have fallen into a bit of a weird gray zone where he's if he had had more power. The inflexibility could have actually worked in his favor and he could have played chicken. Which it did on Blake. Which it did on Blake and he could have played chicken with the studio and gotten what he wanted but because he didn't maybe the studio also didn't have full faith in the movie at the end of the day. We don't know. And you know,

maybe they'd seen daily from the first month and they just kind of thought, well, this is going to

be an also ran this year. I just think it's really difficult to say. It is. Now the production shifted to Malta while delays and rebuilds continued in Prague and it was in Malta. Malta seems to go well in Malta. Well, Chris, it was in Malta that Stephen Norrington asked Sean Connery to punch him in the face. You see tensions between Norrington and Connery had been simmering since the beginning of production and they were getting worse. One day, Norrington had delayed production

by a full day because an elephant gun didn't look right. The two got into a fight resulting in Norrington's unusual request. Now with Sean Connery declined. News leaked almost immediately with the world entertainment news network reporting the incident on August 26th of 2002. But Don Murphy flat out denied it saying quote quite exciting. And then did the legendary boxer, meaning Connery, who once took out Johnny Stompanato punch Steve. Did Steve challenge him to two out of three?

Maybe Stuart Townsman was the referee. The way to confirm that WWE ended have bad sources after the flood we went to Malta. We didn't stay in Prague and fight. And five of the

at the daylies and seeing what this film is destined to be, I'd be surprised if some of the cast

and crew were sick of the director. Quick little sidebar here, do you know what he's talking about with Johnny Stompanato and Sean Connery? I do not. Okay, I'm gonna tell a story because it is fascinating. And listeners, if you would like to hear more about Johnny Stompanato and Lana Turner, let me know because we can do an out of frame about them. So in 1957, says five years before James Bond on the set of another time in other place, Sean Connery's co-star was Lana Turner, who was dating

real-life mob and forcer Johnny Stompanato. Sopanato was a jealous piece of shit who didn't like rumors that were flying in the tabloids about Connery and Turner on set, so he flew to London. Went to the set, pulled a gun on Sean Connery and told him to stay away from Lana Turner. At which point, Sean Connery grabbed the gun, disarmed Stompanato, and knocked him out with one punch.

Lana Turner then called the Scotland Yard and had him deported for breaking gun laws. Of course,

this then later on results in the actual murder or rather justifiable homicide of Stompanato at the hands of Turner's 13-year-old daughter. Pretty crazy. Again, if you guys would like to hear more about it, let me know we can do an out of frame. But yeah, Sean Connery really did do that to the point where later on, he actually was afraid of Mickey Cohen and had to change hotel rooms. He didn't really know who he'd punched in the face. I don't think, but I mean, it's impressive.

Well, I mean, I will say in his 70s, he is doing some pretty impressive stunt choreography in this movie. He looks very, he looks like he can beat up these younger guys, you know, in this film.

“He really being a very big, big man, you know, later in life. But here's the thing, Chris.”

20 years after Don Murphy said, "No way, no how this did not happen." Steven Norrington confirmed that it did indeed happen and he, quote, invited Sean Connery to punch in the face. It is funny how you can tell Don Murphy is covering because that quote is too long. I know. He should have just said, that's ridiculous. Nobody punches each other. And movie set and left it at that. And in a steady said, this movie shall go down in the

annals of the greatest films of all time. I would be stunned if anyone had anything bad to say about anybody because it's going to be Oscar Glory here until the end of time. That's how you know, it's a big time lie and a big time flopper. Yeah. Now, Norrington quit the movie immediately after Sean Connery said, "No." And then he came back about 30 minutes later when the studio said, "Oh, Kinoki, we will sue you." And this was far from the only fight between the two of them.

In a 2011 live chat through Empire magazine, Jason Fleming was asked. Were the bust ups between Sean Connery and the director Steven Norrington as bad as they're made out to be? And he said, "They were worse. They were worse." Yeah. You know that feeling when someone

“in your class is getting told off and your toes curl and your black clerks shoes, that's how it”

was every day. And then he said, "My favorite bust up was on the set of Venice. The league had to walk from Captain Nemo's boat, the noddleist down the street, Magnificent Seventh Style. At the end of the take, Sean shouted out to Norrington, "What? You won't talk to do that again," and Norrington

replied. For $18 million, I don't think it's too much to ask. He walked down a road to which

Connery's reply is unprintable. I would love to know what it was because I bet it was funny. I'm pretty sure if you just pulled all of the insults from the SNL celebrity jeopardy sketch that Sean Connery says to Alec Trebek, "It was probably more or less capture what he said in that moment." By October, Entertainment Weekly had visited the set and their report was not good. Reporter Benjamin Svetke visited the set on the outskirts of Prague and wrote, "Connery had been

stuck in his trailer for the last four hours, waiting for Norrington to finish fidgeting with camera angles and fussing with the lighting." Another crew member told Entertainment Weekly he's not used to be kept waiting on a movie set. I mean, he's 72 years old and he's Sean Connery. Another crew member? The director doesn't know what he wants. He shoots an enormous amount of film. He'll do 10 setups when you usually only do two. Most of this movie is going to end up

on the cutting room floor if it ever even gets finished. For his part, Norrington says, "I did know exactly what I wanted. I wanted a lot of coverage because you need a lot of coverage to

“edit a movie freely." Which, that's how he had shot stuff in the past. And he definitely admitted”

that his stubbornness extended to the relationship with Sean Connery, and it sounds like he particularly ruffled Sean Connery's feathers because he didn't give a shit about who he was. Louis B. stars did not impress Steven Norrington and that's not something Sean Connery was used to. This reminds me, Michelle Gondron. It's herinal sunshine with Tom Wilkinson, for example. But also obviously Jim Carrey, who Gondry did not ask Carrey to punch him, but he did ask him,

"Are you going to punch me at one point on that movie?" Just with the asking Sean Connery to punch you, which I would not recommend doing. Norrington wanted to be able to improvise and experiment, and Connery wanted him to show up with a plan, execute that plan, and then let him go golf at the four seasons.

"Speckey wrote, "The mood on set is so bleak that the cast and crew don't even bother to lie to a visiting journalist about how swell it's all going."

"I've never been on a set as tense as this offers a frazzled stage hand,

everybody just wants to go home." But according to Jeffrey Godsick of VP of Marketing at Fox, it was all worth it because, quote, "He'd seen all the daily's and can tell you this movie, rocks!" "I missed the early 2000s." I do. I will say actually, I'm going to offer a counter-view to something I said earlier. Thinking about it, it's totally possible that I could see being

pretty excited by the daily's of the movie. Oh yeah! Because if you think about some of the sets they've built and some of the set pieces that they have a lot of what you're practical.

“Yeah, so for example, Nemo's vehicle driving through the streets of Venice, I believe,”

taking out the pillars. That's many itchers. I know, and it looks awesome. I think that looks really cool. So maybe they did genuinely think this movie's gonna rock. If we can just make sure Sean Connery does not punch Stephen Norrington or slap any of the women on set, we will be in good shape. I would be more worried about him slapping the women. Evidently, he is more inclined to decline punching the men.

Let's think about Stephen Norrington. This is a bit of a woman. He's a bit of a bitch. Now November 24th, 2002, LXG, wrapped filming. And a couple of really cool effects I do want to shout out. You just mentioned one of them. That sequence where Tom Sawyer races through Venice to say this. And or arguably destroy it as much or more than the Phantom bomb. It's a classic superhero joke. Destroy the city as you save it. Yeah, you didn't save anything.

But yes, you're totally right. That is many itchers. It looks really good. They created

“one fifth scale many itchers of the city's buildings, which weighed almost a thousand pounds each.”

They built special scissor lifts that would lift and collapse the buildings in real time as they're moving the remote control car through it. It looks awesome. It looks really great. It looks great. I did see one source that they actually had to do this sequence twice because the original version didn't work and resulted in a scrambled hiring of a new effects shop. But regardless, whoever did this, it looks awesome. Yeah. And then the other one I want to call out. And this is thanks to a

fun corridor crew video where they were going through a bunch of different VFX. The scene where Rodney Skinner and invisible man first appears and you see him put the white. It's great. It's so good. Good. When you see him put the white paint on his face. And you see the reverse through the back of his head. Yeah. And it looks awesome. Can you guess how they did some of this when he looks like he's painting his face with the white? At least from the front. I assumed that they put his

head inside of some sort of like like they painted it and then he's actually removing the paint. That's exactly right. He's got blue paint on him. Okay. And then he's removing it with something white and soft. And there's white underneath it to expose the face. Yeah. Which is really cool. It works really well. You know, some of it is 3D models like that when he turns and you're seeing it from behind, that's a 3D model. But yeah, it works great. Well, it's moving to post production.

In a 2007 interview, Sean Connery said, "Shaving Norrington was given $85 million to make a movie

in Prague." But unfortunately, he wasn't certified before he started because it would have been arrested for insanity. So we worked as well as we could. And I ended up being heavily involved in the editing and trying to salvage it. And this, unfortunately, Chris was true. Sean Connery was heavily involved in the editing of this movie with Norrington reportedly only supervising edits on three of the movie's seven reels. And according to two people who worked on this film,

he essentially opted out of all directorial duties, including adding new VFX and addressing any studio notes. Norrington basically confirmed this. He framed it more as though he was pushed out at this point versus him opting out. This makes a lot more sense to me. Sean Connery had

“had it with him. I think he, you know, swung his dick around and took over post production.”

Of course, the studio is going to side with Sean Connery in this situation and not Steven Norrington. Norrington even said the composer was, quote, uninterested in taking notes from me. And he finally just threw his hands up and I think he gave up. Soon after filming completed, Norrington had actually written a letter to producers who were developing new projects for him.

Informing them, he was done. He would never work on a Hollywood production again.

On June 30, 2003, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen premiered in Las Vegas at the Venetian. Sean Connery arrived in a gondola. Steven Norrington arrived, not at all. When asked by reporters where the director was, Sean Connery replied, check the local asylum. He really is milking this insight. I think he actually genuinely thinks he's insane. Like, I don't think it's a joke anymore. I think it's a joke. I think it's not a joke. I mean,

he hates him. Here are the one where I called him a no job. I think that's just like the that's the most insulting thing he can think to say is that like you're not in touch with reality,

But Norrington wasn't in the Vegas psych ward. He was actually, Chris. Watching from the crowd. Steven Norrington drove to Las Vegas to his own premiere to watch it all unfold from the sidelines. He said, quote, "It cracked me up, watching Connery and the suits having to explain to reporters why the idiot director was not at convinced." But something else happened to Norrington in the crowd that day. He asked the person next to him,

"What's the premiere for?" And they replied, "Oh, uh, it's that new Johnny Depp movie. Pirates of the Caribbean." Because yes, when the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen opened wide on July 11, 2003, it was directly competing with Pirates of the Caribbean, the curse of the Black Pearl, which was not expected to be a huge hit. That's right.

So, Alex G landed in second place with 23.2 million and Pirates took the top spot at 46.4.

Immediately, questions arose about why the fuck box would pit Alex G against Pirates. And Fox said, "No, no, this was intentional. It was to provide a high-brow alternative for discriminating moviegoers looking for an original film, not a sequel or a film that began as a theme park ride." Which is not true. This is not original IP, and also I think as we learned. This is a movie based on a comic based on nine books. Right. And also,

“I think they thought Pirates of the Caribbean was going to take. That's what everybody thought.”

Most people did. I think even internally Disney was very concerned if you remember our you know, conversation about it. Exactly. I'm sure Fox was like, "This is a sure bet. Pitted against that trash fire. We're going to do great." All the coverage is going to be about Johnny Depp and his sinking pirate ship. Right. And it doesn't help that both take place at sea for a large portion of the film. And so... It also doesn't help that Shane West is kind of

a poor man's Orlando Bloom in some ways. Like they have a similar dynamic of an older actor, and then the sort of young up-and-coming whippersnapper, but Bloom was coming off of Lord of the Rings and had way more name recognition and a bunch of 12-year-old girls who really loved him, including me. They did. They did. So on August 12, 2003, Sean Connery returned to Prague for the European Premier of Alex G on a promise to the Czech Republic's then president.

Connery said, "On a handshake, I shut if the film was on a good, I would bring it to Prague." I like that he thinks it was good. He donated £37,000 around there in proceeds from the screening to flood victims. So that was nice. Roger Ebert gave it one star, as did many other critics.

Here's what Ebert had to say in his review. I don't really mind the movies lack of believability.

Well, I mind a little, to assume audiences will believe cars racing through Venice is as insulting as giving them a gondola chase down the White House lawn. What I do mind is that the movie plays like a big wind came along and blew away the script and they ran down the street after it and grabbed a few pages and shot those. Since Oscar Wilde contributed Dorian Gray to the movie, it may be appropriate to end with his dying words, either that wallpaper goes or I do.

It's pretty good, Roger. LXG would make around $66 million domestically and $179 million worldwide, so it was not a big time flopper. It did make its money back and maybe even a little bit on

“top, especially if you consider DVD sales where I think it was pretty strong.”

Yeah, I would imagine after DVD it probably did okay. It did, and yet it was regarded as an enormous

critical bomb. Now in September of 2003, things got worse for the league when Fox was hit with a

$100 million lawsuit from Academy Award-winning producer Martin Poll, he won for the line in winter and screenwriter Larry Cohen. They accused the studio of stealing the idea for the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but Chris, how could this be? When it was based off of Alan Moore's IP, while much to his shagrin, Alan Moore was named in the suit. The suit said that Poll and Cohen had pitched the idea to Fox multiple times between 1993 and 1996 under the name cast of characters.

They alleged that instead of Don Murphy's story about falling in love with League of Extraordinary Gentlemen while developing from hell, that Fox had retroactively hired Moore to write it as a cover for plagiarism. Now, if you know anything about Alan Moore, there's no way that that is true. Here's what Moore said while being interviewed by Ian Winterton. Some plaintiff in America, some screenwriter had apparently sent some screenplay around with an entirely different bunch of

Victorian characters to the one portrayed in my book, but who did have some similarities to those in the film, which had one or two Hollywood editions, Tom Sawyer, characters like that.

“Apparently the only way this person could add any chance of the case getting into court was to”

actually claim this unlikely string of circumstances where the head of 20th century Fox had stolen this guy's ideas and phoned me up and suggested that I write a comic book, purely to disguise his theft of this guy's ideas. Now, as soon as I heard that, I was a poll because I don't get my ideas from Hollywood screenwriters. In my own medium, I am fairly well respected and I really could not stand for the interference that I was stealing ideas from a second string writer,

especially a medium that I don't have a great deal of respect for. Here's the tricky thing,

that cast of characters screenplay did have similarities to the resulting film the league of extraordinary gentlemen, but they were the elements that were exclusive to the film.

“Exactly. Yeah, remember the things that Fox insisted they throw in, Tom Sawyer,”

Alan Quaterman, as the leader of the league, Dorian Gray. Basically, the suit had no merit against Moore's comic, but it may have had some against the actual film, and Fox settled out a court. But this experience was enough to make Alan Moore want nothing to do with film adaptations of his work ever again. In fact, he vehemently did not want it adapted period because of this.

Anything he owned the rights to, he vowed never to sell to a studio. Anything he couldn't

control, like V. Vendetta and Watchmen, he asked for his name to be removed from the credits and publicly detached himself from the projects. And by the time HBO's Watchmen aired in 2023, he revealed he had donated his entire royalties to Black Lives Matter. As for Sean Connery Chris, he was done with movies too. A year later, he pulled out of a World War II thriller set to be directed by Brett Ratner, and his rep said it's because he's writing his memoir. But this memoir

never materialized. In 2005, Connery told The New Zealand Herald that he had lost a stone king amount of money by pulling out of a deal to have a ghost writer do a tell-all book about his life. And in 2006, Connery officially announced his retirement while receiving a lifetime achievement award for May F.I. And not even Steven Spielberg could lure him back. For Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, with Connery saying, "I should book which Spielberg,

but it didn't work out. It was not that generous apart. Worth getting back into the harness and go for?" And they had taken the story in a different line anyway, so the father of Indeed was really not that important. I had suggested they kill him in the movie. It would have taken care of it better. And Norrington, well, the League of Extraordinary Gentleman, truly soured Hollywood for him as well. He told Rewind Zone in 2025, "I like the idea that

LLXG broke me so fundamentally I could never work with studios again. It sounds a bit like

Shelley Duphal on the Shining, but broken? Nah, wise up, more like. He reminisced on the project and how frustrating it had been. Though Fox had been almost too willing to throw money at certain problems, they were not interested in some of the more experimental cost-saving creativity that he'd been able to exercise on something like, "Blade." He did acknowledge the other side, saying, "Look, it's not reasonable for me to expect that film financiers should give me

their money without them being involved in the process. If I was financing a movie, I'd want to be involved with how my money was being spent." Ultimately, according to Norrington, the biggest problem was that Morris LXG was a dark cynical and provocative adult work, but the movie was always going to be a PG-13 kid-friendly romp propped up by a well-loved

“movie star. I think that's spot on from everything I understand about the comic.”

Norrington has not made a feature film since, despite being attached to various projects that either fell apart or were made with other directors like Clash of the Titans, the Crow Reboot, many more. 20th Century Fox has attempted to reboot it many times, including a pilot and a female centric feature take, which I wonder if that was just correcting the wrongs to mean a Murray. And as of 2022, there was allegedly a feature reboot for Hulu in the works,

but that is yet to materialize, nor is it even really present on IMDB. So, I think that wraps up our coverage of the League of Extraordinary Gentleman. Well, was he thank you for shedding a little light on a film that cost me a heck of a lot of credibility in my peer group 23 years ago? What went right? A few things. I will give my one-went right to the miniatures team, which everyone was asking. Finally hired. I steal it from you. Those shots do look great.

You know, I am simply not as aridite and educated as Roger Ebert. I thought, "Do I have to Venice sound good to me?" And it was great. So, I enjoyed those miniatures scenes and shots quite a bit. And there are some effects in the movie that I actually thought were just perfectly fine and held up just fine after 23 years. And those were all of the physical effects to practical effects in the film. I thought held up very well. I'm going to give my what went right

since you took the effects team, which I did think did a great job to Alan Moore. Every time we cover something that is based on his work, I realize how much I like so much, not all, obviously, of what

“he's done. And he really creates these worlds that do adapt so well to film and TV. And I think”

that what he created here totally could have, particularly a mini series. You know, you see something

like Penny dreadful doing kind of a similar thing and it worked really well. I just always find

myself loving his material. I think it's sad that he probably has never watched HBO's mini series of Watchmen that did air in 2023 because it was beautiful. I don't think you'd like it. Really? I don't think he likes anything that's been adapted period of his work. That's fine. I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying I don't think he would like any of it. That's the sense I get from him. Yeah, that may be true. I don't know. To me, that one felt like

even though it, you know, diverted in ways from the source material that it seemed to me like it

He's a fascinating, complicated, at times problematic person, but I love the stories that he tells

“and I love these worlds that he builds and I'm sorry that he doesn't want them to be adapted”

and I do understand that, but they make for good adaptations a lot of the time. So I what went right is Alan Morris, Crazy Crazy Brain. Very good. All right, Chris, if people would like to support this podcast, how could they do that? Just a few easy ways. If you guys are enjoying this show, we deeply appreciate you listening. That's the number one way to support us and you're already doing it.

If you would like to go a step further, leave us a rating and review on whatever podcast you're

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podcast and for five dollars you get the bonus episodes plus you get an ad free RSS feed. So that means you can listen to all of our episodes with no ads. If you want to go even further, you can join our full stop here and get a shoutout just like one of these from Sean Connery himself. Go ahead let's see Grace Bee, Chris Leo, Chris Zucker, David Friscolandy, Darren and Dale Conklin, Don Shibull, Ellen Singleton, M Zodia, Evan Downey, Argywell Local Relatic Evan Downey, Felicia G,

film it yourself, Frankenstein, Full Grey Hound, Gailon and Miguel the Broken Blast Kids, Grace Potter, Half Grey Hound, James McAvoy, Jared pronounced again, don't tell me how to pronounce something, Jared, Jason Franco, JJ Rabino, Jory Hill Piper, Jose Emilano, Souto Jojo, Ria Triandertruth Mia Jose, Karina Kanaba, Kate Erwrington, Kathleen Olson, Amy Elga Schlager McCoy, that's a good Scottish name, but they're Amy Lazy Freddy, Lena L. J, Lydia House, Mark Bertha,

Mariposa's humans, Matthew Jacobson, Michael McGrath, Nathan Knife, Nathan Centino, Rosemary, Scythward Roja, Sadie, Just Sadie, Scott Oshita, Soman Chey Nani, Steve Winterbauer, Surzan Johnson, the Provost family, the O's sound like holes, there is no spoon, why is there no spoon I don't get it, similar to the moon the rings which I also do not get, I don't, I don't get much. Alright Chris, would you like to tell the people what we have coming up next week?

We have a movie that could be called the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen of what should we do about encroaching fascism? We're covering Casa Blanca, which is one of my favorite classic Hollywood

“films and I think a really important movie to cover at the moment that we're at right now”

and a very unexpected success and so I'm really excited to dive into it and the where and the and the who wrote it and the timing of the film and everything about it and where Warner Brothers was and the Humphrey Bogart of it all, it's going to be a fun time so I'm excited to dive back, I know we've been doing some more modern films so far this year and I think it'll be fun to dive back 75, 80 years to Casa Blanca. I can't wait, alright, well we'll see you all next week,

he's looking at you, okay? Bye! [Music]